DIY happiness

How I save money on my daily coffee routine

I’m in love with coffee. And if this article sparked your attention, my guess is you are too 😉 . If I can’t have at least one decent cup of coffee in the morning, let me tell you, I’m not going to feel like myself.

Just for the sake of this blog post, I’m willing to share a few and embarrassing personal stories to demonstrate exactly how fond I am of delicious cups of coffee – and by this I mean, to what extent I’m willing to go just to get my morning shot – and after you’ve all had your fun, I’ll explain the solutions I’ve implemented to get a hold of myself and my coffee finances. Woohoo!

#1 That time I took a 30-minutes detour on my way to work

Every morning, I wake up, take a shower, have breakfast, and…. I walk to my workplace. It’s a 30 minute walk. This routine has a threefold benefit: I work out (for free), I don’t pay for the bus/train/a car, and in third place, I have some extra time to wake up and think about the day ahead.

And then one day, when I had just started at my current firm, I didn’t feel very excited about the day ahead. And so I decided to treat myself to an expensive coffee on my way to work. I thought to myself: “Where could I possibly go to to fix my coffee craving?”. And so my genius brain thought it would be a great idea to take a detour on my way to work – walking 30 minutes in the opposite direction just to get a Starbucks 4€ Latte – and then walking another 30 minutes back to work. My cup of coffee had -of course- already cooled off on my walk, and of course I didn’t savour it very much as I was rushing through Antwerp to be on time.

Me spilling coffee all over myself didn’t happen recently or anything. Like at all.

I mean, wouldn’t it be perfectly ridiculous that a women in the second half of her twenties can’t phone her friend from the train station to tell the train is running late, and drink coffee simultaneously? That would be absolutely ridiculous. That did not happen to me, I did not get so distracted by the train and the phone and the schedule and the people on the platform that I accidentally poured my fresh latte all over my new, blue, soft scarf.

Lesson learned: 2.50€ waisted and headed home to wash said scarf before it got stained permanently!

And this one is complimentary:

#3 I tried to make soap with ground coffee (*such a delicious shower scrub*) and it smelled HOR-RIB-BLE.

The wonderful Tale of our Coffee Maker (a.k.a. How to save Money on your Coffee)

Bodum Coffee Maker and a book: the perfect start to a Saturday morning!

Enters my Bodum Coffee Maker. *BADUM TSSS!*

I believe my family is aware of my coffee addiction, because last Christmas, my grandmother gifted me the Bodum coffee maker in the picture above. What she did not know, was that I had bought myself the cheap version of this type of coffee maker in a regular store, but because the thing being cheap, it did not have the metal holder like the coffee maker from Bodum. And so, being my clumsy self, I knocked the glass pot on our countertop and – of course it broke.

My grandmother fixed two problems for me: first a new coffee maker (woop woop) and second: cheap coffee! Aha! “She’s finally getting to her point!”

Why is this coffee the perfect solution for me?

This coffee maker requires three to four spoons of ground coffee

One spoon = 7 grams = one big cup of coffee

7 grams = 0.067 euros.

4 x 0.067 = 0.27 euros.

Hang on! Did I just make FOUR CUPS OF COFFEE for 0.27 EUROS?! Oh boy, yes I did. By using this type of coffee. It’s almost fifteen times cheaper than one single Latte at Starbucks.

So how about this as an alternative to your expensive coffee?

Yes, I know it’s getting ridiculous. I’m trying to quit my addiction!

“But I have no time/I’m too lazy/I do not possess any coffee-making skills to fix my cravings in the morning!”

You know what? I LOOOOOOVE my morning routine of getting up, putting on the kettle, preparing the coffee maker in the quiet hours of the early day. I pop my fresh batch of coffee in my thermos (which by the way, was gifted by my younger brother – another free item!) and I’m good to go. No more spilling coffee on my clothes.

You might argue that a Bodum Coffee Maker is expensive, and therefore, your coffee is expensive. I would agree. Except that this one was gifted to us, so I didn’t pay anything for it. That doesn’t help you because my grandmother is not your grandmother, and so you won’t be getting one for next Christmas.

But you could always ask 😉

And if that’s not a possibility, have you tried to source for a second-hand one? There are many websites purely dedicated to second-hand items, and even second-hand Facebook groups, where you could enquire.

“But I won’t have the delicious pleasure of having a tasty Latte made especially for me!”

And you know what else #2? Apart from rejoicing in my morning routine, I think this coffee is delicious. I’m an independent woman, I can make my own coffee. It’s much tastier to make coffee with this type of coffee maker than any other machine I’ve encountered (and I’ve seen and tasted them all!).

How about you? Are you as much of a coffee addict as myself? Do you think you could change to a different system to save yourself some money?

3 thoughts on “How I save money on my daily coffee routine”

I also use a french press to make coffee every morning! Yesterday I broke my 3rd bodum though…so I went looking for one made of metal. Turned out, there are ones made of stainless, double walled, for only $22 on Amazon! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner.